By Toya Y. Williams

Little boy caught between blocks of past and present before freedom

Mommies not here anymore she ran for her first love….first love of that needle in her arm

Daddies don’t care anymore he is behind that war line

And I am a warrior now with these bullets at six

Parents sold me to the slave master on the block

I must work to survive

Ancestor plowed the field I plow their minds

At six before you a new hustle

Rappers try to capture my soul in words

Words don’t mean nothing here

Because parent don’t mean anything here

Before this hell I am free in my mind

Spelling and math don’t mean  nothing here

Slave on the block

Once I make something out of nothing daddy will return

Mommies still is with her first love, first love

And I am one of a million right under the flag

Under the ground, slave on the block

Nothing is the only word I learned from master here on the block

Sold by my mother to this life, this life is all I got

Sunlight creeps in above 4:00 cause that’s what my brother says

I claim him cause he three and sick with AIDS they tell me he will die

His parents left him for their first love

Master says we are safe from the man next door who loves children to death

I work the block my brother works in the store

I make more but he is related to master

Brother can read at three, I think he is three he is smaller I am bigger

I work hard on the block, real hard beyond my age

I hustle, what ever that means, I hustle and you think I am a juvenile

I am a man at six with the world before me

Shhhh!! Quiet don’t talk master is coming I must go to bed.

Toya Y. Williams is a final year student at Virginia Wesleyan College, Virginia Beach, USA. She was awarded a Presidential and White House Silver medal for Community Services in 2005 and is a 2006 Poetry Ambassador for the United States.